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File photo of Om Prakash Rajbhar.

In his letter to CM Yogi, the disgruntled BJP ally cited non-payment of dues and discrepancies in scholarship to students hailing from backward castes as the reason behind his decision.

Rajbhar said he would, however, continue to be in charge of the empowerment of persons with disabilities department.

The Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party chief (SBSP) chief alleged that the non-implication of 27 per cent quota for the backward castes, as per the report of social justice committee, has caused massive unrest against the government. He accused the UP government of ignoring the names recommended by him for the backward commission and said the government was paying no heed t othe interest of the backward classes.

Earlier, Rajbhar had dared CM Yogi to throw him out of the cabinet. He has been demanding implementation of sub-quota for Other Backward Classes (OBC) ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. “It has been 22 months since the BJP government was formed in UP. I dare Yogi Adityanath today to throw me out of the cabinet. I will continue my fight for the poor. I am the only 72-year-old minister who is fighting against a chief minister,” Rajbhar had said.

“I am not asking for any mining lease, I am just asking for some arrangement for the OBCs and Dalits. If you go towards eastern and central Uttar Pradesh, you will find that the condition of the government is quite bad. I have given time till February 24, after which I will take some concrete decision,” said Rajbhar, who is a key ally of the Yogi Adityanath led government in the state.

The Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj party chief had also announced that his party may go solo on all the 80 seats in the state in the general elections. “If BJP decides to keep us out of the coalition, we will be prepared to go solo on all 80 Lok Sabha seats,” he had said.

Rajbhar’s party has four MLAs in the UP Assembly. He has often been critical of Adityanath and has claimed that his party was not getting the ‘due respect’. Before that, he had attacked the UP government for renaming the cities of Mughalsarai and Faizabad. “They say they (the cities) were named after the Mughals. They have national spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain, Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, UP minister Mohsin Raza, three Muslim faces of the BJP, change their names first,” he had said.